Cadaver & Queen

by Alisa Kwitney

  “It’s in my nature, I’m afraid.”

  “Try to overcome it.” She stepped inside the dimly lit building, willing her eyes to adjust quickly to the gloom so she could find her room without wasting too much time.

  “Come on. We don’t have all day,” said Byram.

  “Fine, follow me,” she said, and promptly walked into a firmly corseted human body. “Oh! I am so sorry, I didn’t see you standing there...”

  “Obviously,” said a commanding female voice. “What is less obvious to me is what you three are doing near the nurse’s quarters during lessons?” Now that Lizzie’s eyes had adjusted, she could see that the person she had the misfortune to walk into was none other than Ursula Shiercliffe, head of nursing. In her black, high-necked gown and jet earrings, Shiercliffe looked more like a headmistress than a nurse, but Lizzie had been told that her white lace cap with its long trailing veil was a sign of her rank.

  “Dr. Moulsdale sent us to go back to my room to fetch my magnetometer.”

  “Did he indeed? Perhaps he was not aware, then, that no male students are allowed in this wing.”

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” said Will quickly. “We had no idea that Miss Lavenza roomed with the nurses.”

  Lizzie, embarrassed, bit the inside of her cheek.

  “It is ‘Matron,’ not ‘ma’am.’ And Miss Lavenza was aware, or should have been.” Shiercliffe gave her a piercing look. “I do recall giving you a rather thorough explanation of what would and would not be permitted, given your rather unusual circumstances.” Shiercliffe raised her eyebrows, making it clear what she thought of these circumstances.

  “I had thought, once we were close enough, to go into my room on my own,” said Lizzie, refusing to be cowed. She was not a nursing student. Shiercliffe had no authority over her.

  “Your room is right over here.” The matron stopped in front of a door that looked like all the others in the hall. “Be quick about your business. I have too much to do as it is, without having to tarry here keeping an eye on these two.”

  “I will,” Lizzie promised.

  Her room, which had once been a monk’s cell, was long and narrow and sparsely furnished with a single bed, an old, scratched desk and chair, a rag rug and a lopsided wardrobe that was too large for the space and covered part of the window. That didn’t matter much, as there wasn’t much of a view: the window opened onto the courtyard where the hospital sheets hung out on lines in good weather.

  Lizzie walked over to her bed. Her mother had designed and sewn the pink and red patchwork quilt, along with the embroidered pillow that gave the room its only feminine touches. Lizzie should have been taught to stitch her own trousseau, but her mother had died when Lizzie was only eight. As much as she had missed her mother while growing up, it was hard to imagine trading all those years in her father’s laboratory for a collection of embroidered linens.

  Kneeling on the floor, she pulled her trunk from under the bed. She had packed the magnetometer wrapped in clothes to protect it, so now she had to rummage through a jumble of wool winter skirts, everyday shawls, spare underdrawers and—there they were—the underarm dress shields she’d been looking for that morning.

  Outside the door, which she hadn’t bothered to close completely, she heard Byram say, “Surely you don’t think we’re a bad influence on Miss Lavenza, Matron?”

  Shiercliffe’s response was unintelligible.

  “I’ve never been a bad influence before.” That was Will.

  “I’m rubbing off on you,” replied Byram.

  “Just see that you don’t rub off on Miss Lavenza,” said Shiercliffe, so sharply that Lizzie stifled a laugh.

  “You don’t have to worry too much about that one,” said Byram. “She’s nobody’s fool.”

  On the other side of the door, Lizzie forgot what she was doing for a moment. There was an old adage that eavesdroppers seldom heard any good of themselves, but unless she had misheard him, that sulky, cynical boy had just paid her a compliment.

  “Miss Lavenza?” Shiercliffe poked her head around the door. “Whatever is taking so long?”

  “I’m sorry, I packed it away a bit too well.” Lizzie frantically felt around in her trunk until her hand hit something hard. “Found it.” She held up the box.

  “About time, too.” Shiercliffe held the door open, her cool gaze taking in the disordered state of Lizzie’s trunk. “You might want to brush the dust off your skirt. And I take it that you will not make a habit of these group excursions?”

  “I won’t,” said Lizzie, trying not to look as flustered as she felt.

  “And that goes for you two, as well,” Shiercliffe said, addressing the boys.

  “Our word on it, Matron,” Will said, but Shiercliffe’s slender form was already heading down the hall away from them, her white lace veil trailing behind her like a nun’s.

  “Well,” said Byram, “I guess we know what she needs.”

  “Byram! There’s a lady present.”

  “You mean Lavenza? Nonsense, man. She’s just a lowly soldier in the great war against disease, same as we are.”

  He gets it, she thought. Perhaps having a bad foot wasn’t so different from being the only female. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

  “Well, I thought I should probably be kind, since you’re probably about to make a complete fool of yourself in front of Moulsdale and the entire class.”

  She was still trying to think of a suitable rejoinder when they arrived back at the sick ward.

  5

  Moulsdale was checking his pocket watch while the other first year students were debating, so it was the patient, Private Holden, who first noticed Lizzie’s approach.

  “Cor, blimey, that took you long enough,” he said. “What did you do, stop off at the local for a pint?”

  “She got lost a few times,” said Byram.

  Lizzie shot him a dirty look, and thought how unfair it was that she couldn’t say that it was his bad foot that had slowed them down.

  “Well, now that you are finally here,” said Moulsdale, “perhaps you can get on with it?”

  She moved forward, feeling terribly self-conscious as she pulled off her gloves so that she could untie the velvet bag.

  Moulsdale sniffed. “Is that all the bits and pieces? Looks rather small.”

  Lizzie pulled out the polished wooden box and set it on the patient’s bedside table. A brass plate was engraved with the words Lavenza’s Patented Etheric Magnetometer, but the truth was, her father had never received a patent, which he would have put in her name. He was never good about doing paperwork, and Nikola Tesla beat him to it by a matter of days, calling the device by another name. It was why her father had been forced to see patients, and why he had caught the infection that took his life.

  Don’t think about that now. Concentrate.

  Lizzie opened the lid, revealing an assortment of glass and metal attachments of various shapes and sizes. She selected a medium-size glass wand that widened into a bulb at the end.

  Holden sat up straighter. “’Ere now, where you plan on puttin’ that?”

  “These are applied externally,” she reassured him as she attached the glass tube into the black celluloid handle. “We simply turn this dial,” she said, “and the machine begins oscillating at a high frequency.” There was a buzzing sound as a violet light appeared inside the glass wand. “Are you ready?”

  “You sure it’s safe?” He looked rather dubious.

  “Yes, you should feel nothing more than a mild tingling sensation. See?” She passed the wand over her own hand, so that everyone could see the small arcs of light flickering like violet tongues over her palm. “It doesn’t hurt.” She moved the glass wand over the bandaged stump.

  “I can feel it!” Holden gave a little whoop of excitement. “There’s a tingling!” The other m
edical students moved in closer, crowding around her.

  “Careful not to knock the table with the control box,” she warned Outhwaite as she moved the wand, which crackled with electricity. She thought about telling the students to back off, but Moulsdale was standing next to the box, as well. She didn’t want to order him to move. “All right, I’m going to make the current a little stronger. Excuse me, sir.” Moulsdale moved aside so she could reach the box, and she turned the dial slightly, just a fraction higher than the lowest setting. “Ready?” Turning back to the patient, she placed the wand on his stump.

  “Ow! That stings a bit.”

  “You’re probably not used to the sensation. Try to bear with it a little. We want to give the fields time to align.” She ran the wand over the stump again as the man grimaced and twitched as if he had palsy. She glanced at Moulsdale, who was standing beside Outhwaite and looking singularly unimpressed.

  “Crikey. I can’t take much more o’ this.”

  The wand sizzled as it passed over his stump, but Lizzie knew that the sound was misleading. At this setting, the wand gave only a very mild charge.

  “Surely you can’t be more delicate than I am? I used it on myself a moment ago, remember?”

  “Aargh!” There was a popping sound as the glass wand shattered, and the patient sat up, using his good arm to fling the magnetometer away from him. There was a crack as the celluloid handle slammed against the floor, and then a thud and the box, connected by the electrical wire, fell after it. “She tried to cook me! Doesn’t ’urt, she says. In a pig’s eye it don’t ’urt.” Holden wasn’t lying. A singed, burned smell filled the air. “Stupid cow! Whatcher tryin’ ter do, finish what the Boer started? Why don’t you go back to America and burn some of your own sort?”

  Heart pounding, Lizzie couldn’t stop staring at the broken magnetometer. “I don’t understand! It shouldn’t have hurt you at all.”

  “Yeah, well, it did.”

  As Outhwaite and a few of the others smirked at her, Will bent down to pick up the box.

  “Leave that for Miss Lavenza,” said Moulsdale, waving him away. “And now we can see why ‘do no harm’ is the first tenet of good medicine. When no cause can be determined, it is sometimes all a doctor can do to treat a patient’s symptoms and make him as comfortable as possible. To this end, the correct treatment for Private Holden is a prescription of laudanum, to soothe his troubled nerves.”

  “Oi,” said Holden, “laudanum! ’Ow am I goin’ to afford laudanum? I’m a cripple now, remember?”

  “Questions of finance are not in my purview.” Moulsdale checked his watch. “Time to move on, gentlemen? Miss Lavenza, perhaps you can tend to the man’s burns. There are salves in the medicine cabinet.”

  He led the medical students away, laughing and chatting about women and contraptions. Will glanced over his shoulder, and Byram shrugged as if to say, What can we do?

  “Women,” said Private Holden, presumably to himself, since the patients on either side of him were both fast asleep or unconscious and Lizzie was the only person left standing in the ward. “Why don’t you stick with the things you’re good at? Ow!” he exclaimed, as she pressed the cool compress to his stump. “Not so hard. Don’t you know anythin’ about nursin’?”

  She sighed, spreading the salve on his stump as gently as she could. “I’m not a nurse.”

  “Oi...’ang on.” Private Holden was grasping his stump and staring at it. “Now that the burnin’s stopped...I don’t feel any pain anymore!” His face split into a wide grin. “I take it all back, darlin’. You’re a marvel.”

  “That’s wonderful.” She smiled a little wanly. Two minutes earlier, and this revelation might have redeemed her. “I don’t suppose you could mention that to Dr. Moulsdale when you see him again?”

  “’Course I will, you ministerin’ angel. ’Course I will.”

  Perhaps something could be salvaged from this disaster after all.

  Taking a deep breath to steel herself, Lizzie looked at the magnetometer, which was lying on the floor, four of the five glass tubes broken and the celluloid handle cracked. No telling how badly the coils inside were damaged. She picked up the remaining tube and wrapped it as gently as though it were a small corpse. It was only as she began packing up the box that she saw that someone had turned the dial to its maximum strength.

  6

  The medical students and nurses dined together in the refectory, a hall where medieval monks had once broken their bread, but Lizzie was too preoccupied to appreciate the high, curved, wood-beamed ceiling and arched windows. It was hard to concentrate on anything when her head was throbbing, and the constant hum and clatter of the other students wasn’t helping matters.

  “Still fretting? You’re going to get frown lines,” said Byram, waiting for her to slide into the low bench before seating himself.

  “Someone changed the setting on my machine and destroyed my reputation. That’s a perfectly good reason to be in a blue funk.”

  “For a female, sure.” Byram poked at his stew. “But doctors can’t afford to get the dismals from every little setback.”

  “This isn’t about feelings. This is about fairness.” She nudged him with her elbow. “Let me out. I need to explain what happened to Professor Moulsdale.”

  Byram continued investigating the contents of his stew. “Don’t be such a sawney-headed chunk. Who do you think set you up in the first place?”

  “What are you talking about? Outhwaite was standing right there, smirking at me.”

  “He wasn’t the only one.”

  “What possible reason would Moulsdale have for changing the setting?”

  Byram regarded her from underneath heavily lidded eyes. “Our head of medicine doesn’t cotton to students who are too clever.”

  For a moment, she was speechless. “But what about the patient who got burned? That goes against the Hippocratic Oath.”

  “You mean, ‘first, do no harm’? Not actually part of the oath, as a matter of fact. Besides, Moulsdale follows the Hypocritical Oath—first, do no harm to one’s career.” Byram forked a piece of potato. “You made the mistake of showing up Moulsdale.” He popped the morsel into his mouth with a flourish, then made a face. “Gad, that’s awful.”

  “Oh, Lord, what do I do if you’re right? If Moulsdale has it in for me, I’m doomed.”

  “Must you constantly sound as though you’re rehearsing lines for a melodrama?” Byram flung his hand back onto his forehead. “Doomed, I tell you, doomed!”

  Lizzie was glaring at Byram when Will set his tray down with a clatter of cutlery.

  “Why is Lizzie looking like she wants to throw her bowl at you? What have I missed?”

  “Just some gloom and doom.”

  Mouth too full to speak, Will raised his eyebrows. “Mm?”

  “Oh, please, don’t. I can’t bear to watch the way you shovel that swill into your mouth.”

  Will swallowed and then took another bite of his food. “So don’t watch.”

  “Unbelievable. Do we even know what kind of meat is in the stew?”

  Will examined one piece. “Geriatric mutton, by the look of it.”

  As the two argued whether the food at Ingold was more or less disgusting than the food at Eton, Lizzie caught fragments of other people’s conversations.

  “...and then he stuck his thumb straight into the wound, as if it were a plum pudding, and brought out the bullet.”

  “...the entire bottle of absinthe, completely empty...”

  “...didn’t even realize the poor blighter was dead until the nurse came in and asked me what I thought I was doing to the corpse!”

  “Faculty, of course, gets to dine on steak pie,” said Byram. “No wonder Moulsdale looks like a well-tailored pachyderm.”

  The faculty sat on a raised dais, underneath a faded tapestry
of a greyhound, a rabbit and a sly-looking unicorn next to a sullen maiden with a receding hairline. Moulsdale’s plate held a heaping slice of pie, while Grimbald, the tall, thin, head of surgery, had taken a much more modest portion.

  “Aren’t you going to eat anything, Lizzie?”

  She realized that Will had been watching her. “I’m too busy worrying whether I’m going to be expelled.”

  “For one little mistake?”

  “Will, I’m female. I don’t get to make mistakes.” She slumped on her seat. “Maybe they’ll transfer me to nursing.”

  Byram dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “Do you always vacillate between brashness and abject despair?”

  “Not always, but frequently.”

  “Well, then. Once you swing back to boldness, you can try out your whatsit again. There must be any number of patients around you can practice on.”

  “I can’t, even if I wanted to. The device is broken.” And without a laboratory, she would have no way to attempt to repair it.

  “At least you had the nerve to try,” said Will.

  “It would have been smarter to keep my mouth shut.”

  Will shrugged. “If you were the type to do that, you wouldn’t be here, would you? My brother was always the first to raise his hand. He had the right answer, and he wasn’t going to waste time pretending to be modest.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Byram shot her a warning look. “He died last year.”

  “Oh, Lord, I am so sorry... I had no idea.” Except that now she recalled Moulsdale offering Will his condolences, so she should have had an idea. “And now I sound exactly like all the people who told me they were sorry when my father passed away. I never knew what to say, so I just smiled and looked embarrassed. Which is what you’re doing now.” Lizzie buried her head in her hands. “Never mind me. I want to sink through the floor now.”

  “Well, you can’t, so sit up straight,” Byram said, setting aside his plate with a sigh. “Now, laugh as though I’ve just said something amusing.”

  “Why should I?” Lizzie’s voice was muffled by her arms.